Absolutely Almost (15 page)

S
top leaving dumb notes in my desk. I don't want to talk to you.

That was what the note said that I found in my desk Friday morning.

I didn't know who the note was from, or why anybody would think it was
me
leaving dumb notes in their desk. I only left things in Betsy's desk, and those were super-helpful hints to help her be cool like me.

I wanted to leave my helpful hint in Betsy's desk that morning too:
Wear the low kind of socks, not the high ones.
But Betsy was already sitting at her desk early, so I couldn't. I put it in her cubby instead.

W
e went over to Erlan's apartment to watch the very first episode of their television show on Friday night, me and Mom and Dad. A pilot, that's what the TV show was called, like it was going to fly an airplane or something.

Television is weird.

Erlan's brothers and sisters all had friends over too, and there were a couple extra adults, so there wasn't much room. Erlan's parents brought out folding chairs, but there still weren't enough for everybody, so a bunch of us kids ended up sitting on the floor. We had popcorn and soda, which normally I wasn't allowed to drink after dinnertime, but Mom said it was okay just this once. The grown-ups ate veggie sticks.

“Aren't you excited?” I asked Erlan. “You're going to be on TV!”

He shrugged. He didn't seem too excited.

Anyway,
I
was excited.

When the show came on, everyone shushed to watch it. At the very beginning, after the title
Meet the Kasteevs,
they showed Erlan's parents, really big on the screen, then all the kids, one by one.

“Alma!” a voice on the screen said. And then there was a shot of Erlan's big sister Alma cuddling a kitten. It wasn't the Kasteevs' kitten, so I didn't know where it came from, but when I tried to ask, I got shushed.

“Ainyr!” the voice said. There was Ainyr, putting on lipstick in her mirror. I didn't even know she wore lipstick.

Then there was “Roza!” and “Erik!” and “Karim!” and they all did things too, so you could get to know which kid was which, I guess. “Erlan!” was last, and what he did when he was on-screen was give the Vulcan salute. “Hey!” I said, and laughed, because that made me happy.

When that happened, I looked next to me, and I could tell that even Erlan was smiling. Just a little bit.

It was a good show. It turned out the first episode was Erlan and his brothers' birthday party, so that was fun to watch because I'd been there in real life. They even showed me on camera once, when we were playing musical plates, except my face was blurred out, so you couldn't tell it was me if you didn't know. “
No release!
” Erlan and I both screamed at once, and giggled.

We got shushed again, but it was worth it.

After the show, Erlan came over to my apartment for a sleepover. “You can have the good sleeping bag if you want,” I told him while we were setting up in the living room. “Since you're a big famous TV star.”

Erlan threw a pillow at my head. “Shut up,” he said. “Just treat me normal, okay? You always have to treat me normal.”

I thought about that. And then I picked up the pillow, and I whacked him with it. “Like that?” I said, laughing.

Erlan laughed too. He picked up my pillow. “Exactly,” he said, and he whacked me back.

We had a very normal pillow fight.

I guess it wasn't too bad, having a big famous TV star for a best friend.

C
alista didn't usually come over on the weekends, only sometimes. She didn't usually come over in the mornings either, but Dad had a big project coming up and Mom had moved her Pilates schedule, so they said that might happen more. I didn't mind.

“Can we get donuts?” I asked Calista first thing, as soon as Mom closed the door behind her. I was still in my pajamas, but I would change for donuts. I would do almost anything for donuts.

Calista scrunched up her face, thinking. I didn't know exactly what was going on in her brain, because that was a thing you could never know 100 percent for sure, but if I had to guess, I'd bet that she was thinking about whether she should let me go get donuts, which were delicious, or if she should make me have a healthy breakfast, which was
not
delicious.

I guess the healthy part won, because she pulled the box of Cheerios out of the cupboard.

“Aw,
man,
” I said.

“What?” Calista said, unlatching the dishwasher to find a clean bowl. “I thought you said you wanted donuts. So”—she popped the lid on the box and poured out a bowlful—“donut cereal.”

I inched my way over to the counter. I knew Calista was being silly, because for one thing I knew the difference between real donuts and Cheerios, and donuts tasted way better. Also, I could tell a trick to force me to eat a healthy breakfast when I saw one. But if I
had
to eat a healthy breakfast, maybe thinking it was a bowlful of mini donuts wasn't the worst thing in the world.

“Thanks,” I told Calista, and I grabbed my bowl of mini-donut cereal and went to the fridge to get the milk.

While I ate breakfast and Calista sipped her coffee from downstairs, we worked on our superheroes, and I was extra careful not to drip any milk drops on mine. Calista said Donut Man was getting really good, and that time, I could tell she wasn't being silly.

“You really do love donuts, don't you, Albie?” she asked me while I slurped up the last of my milk on my spoon.

“Yep,” I said, because that was the truth.

Calista smiled at that. “I think I just figured out what to get you for your birthday,” she said.

I sat up straight in my chair. “You did?”

She nodded.

“Is it a donut?”

“Not telling.”

“I bet it's a donut.”

Calista laughed. “You'll just have to wait and see, won't you?”

I pushed my bowl to the middle of the table and pulled out a fresh piece of paper. “It's a donut,” I said again. And I started on another drawing of Donut Man, with his arms reaching high up into the sky. He was going to be holding the world's biggest donut, I decided. It was going to be my best drawing yet.

O
n Monday morning I got to school early, so I went to the drinking fountain to play Pokémon, but right when I got there, everyone got up and left.

I thought that was weird.

“Hi, Darren!” I said to Darren as he walked away. But he kept walking, didn't even turn around.

That was kind of weird too.

During first recess, I couldn't find Darren at all. He wasn't playing tetherball like he normally was. Nobody else was there either.

That was weirder.

Then at lunch when I went to sit down at the table, Darren put his hand on the bench, right where I was about to sit, and said, “What do you think you're doing, dummy?” And he didn't say “dummy” the way he did before, where it was mean-but-not-really. He said “dummy” the way he had before
that,
where it was actually mean.

“I'm, um . . .” I glanced around. Nobody would look at me. “I was going to eat lunch?” I wondered why he was asking. That's what everybody did at lunchtime—eat lunch.

“Not here you're not,” Darren told me. “We don't want liars here.”

“Oh,” I said. “Okay.” Even though I was sort of confused about what he was talking about. Because I was pretty sure he meant me. And I was not a liar.

“Why did you tell everyone that kid Erlan was your best friend?” Candace said, slapping her panda lunch box on the table. “Just so people would think you were cool?”

“Erlan is my best friend,” I said. I was just standing, because even though Darren had moved his hand, I didn't think I was allowed to sit down yet. I didn't know what to do. I was confused about the rules again. “We've been best friends since we were four. He lives down the hall.”

“Liar,” Candace said. She flipped the tabs on her lunch box. “I watched the show on Friday, and you weren't in it.”

“I
was,
” I said.

“No you weren't,” Lizzy said. “Candace told us. They had a birthday party with
all their friends,
and you weren't there. You're such a liar. Go sit over there.”

I looked at Darren. “But . . . ,” I said. Darren was my friend. He said I was cool.

“Go sit over there,
dummy,
” Darren said. He didn't even look up at me.

• • •

I ate lunch at the far end of the table, with nobody even near me. They were all scooched over tight on the other side, like I might give them some disease or something.

I was a nobody all day.

I was a nobody the next day too.

And the day after that.

I wished Betsy was there. I guessed I wasn't cool anymore, just like her.

I wished I'd never been cool at all.

W
hat did the calculator say to the student?”

That was Mr. Clifton's joke during math club.

But when he peered at us over his glasses and cleared his throat and said, “You can count on me!” I didn't laugh.

I didn't laugh harder than Savannah, even.

I just sat at my desk with my arms crossed over my chest, grumpy, and said, “You don't count on a calculator. You
add.
”

I didn't even raise my hand to say it either.

Behind me, Jacob whispered, “
Whoa.
”

The past couple days, Mr. Clifton's jokes haven't been very funny.